Articles from February 2016

When you’re looking for advice on your diet and overall nutrition, there’s certainly no shortage of suggestions, diet tricks and tips, and expert opinions. However, when you want to focus on your health and improve your eating habits, you don’t need quick fixes and fast tips – you want to be able to adhere to a better lifestyle, and feed your body the nutrients it needs to be at your best. The many diet and nutrition books available both in bookstores and online can help, but they can also feel overwhelmingly impossible to choose between. How do you know which nutrition books are the best to follow or try? Some, according to health and nutrition experts, are better than others – here are the three best to consider when you’re looking for nutritional advice.

Diet Cults: The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of Us by Matt Fitzgerald

The title of this nutrition book says it all: author Matt Fitzgerald isn’t here to write about all of the quick fixes and hacks that you can attempt in order to lose weight or get “healthy” in a pinch. Instead, his book focuses on debunking all of those fad diets surrounding us every day and helping you fuel your body in all of the right ways. Fitzgerald is no newbie to the world of nutrition, either – he’s written many previous books on both nutrition and fitness, and he knows his health science. Fitzgerald attacks every popular diet that claims to be our one solution to health and weight loss. As a solution, he suggests following the nutritional habits our bodies are designed to follow by organizing all that you eat into a hierarchy. Instead of cutting foods out of your diet, Fitzgerald recommends eating more foods at the top of the hierarchy and fewer at the bottom. If you eat something unhealthy, his methods aren’t about feeling guilty; instead, it’s all about balancing worse foods with nutritious foods.

Unmasking Superfoods: The Truth and Hype About Acai, Quinoa, Chia, Blueberries, and More by Jennifer Sygo

Who hasn’t tried a superfood or two in an effort to eat in a more nutritious way? With so much hype surrounding superfoods, it’s not surprisingly that we’re turning to them. However, according to author Jennifer Sygo, they aren’t all that some claim they are. A sports nutrition expert and columnist for newspapers, Sygo is familiar with the nutrition habits of elite athletes and the average person. Her nutrition book is a top choice because she prizes evidence over all the superfood hype, breaking down each food and whether or not it’s worth your interest. She delves deeply into many different superfoods, classifying each as overhyped, underhyped, old classics, and even downright bad as she explains how they work. Sygo’s book can help you determine if certain foods are necessities or just poor advice.

The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work by Yoni Freedhoff

A very recent publication, Yoni Freedhoff’s new book may sound like a new fad diet – however, Freedhoff isn’t advocating any crazy crash diets. Instead, he’s similar in theory and approach to Fitzgerald, advising readers to eat in a healthy, sustainable manner rather than relying on temporary quick fixes. An experienced obesity doctor, Freedhoff advises readers on how they can stop failing at their healthy eating plans by avoiding traditional “diets” and swapping them out for a more balanced approach to dining. He breaks down a successful nutrition plan into writing in a diary, exercising, and cooking, leaving certain food types and categories out of his advice altogether.

Head into any bookstore, or browse the endless supply of books online, and you’ll find thousands of books on fitness. From how to workout at home and build muscle every day to mastering the equipment at the gym along with nutritional planning, there’s certainly no shortage of books that suggest how readers of any fitness level can earn their dream body. Yet why are there so many different ideas and books on this single topic? Well, with so much variance in ways to be healthy and get fit, there’s a lot of advice to accompany them.

Everyone who writes a book about fitness is an expert of some sort, or claims to be one. However, that doesn’t mean that every fitness book, or all of these authors, agree with one another. Each person has a different idea as to what is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy when it comes to fitness and health. For example, some believe avoiding eggs and dairy is key, while others believe it’s carbs that cause problems. That’s where the endless supply of fitness books come from – the areas in which experts disagree, or conflict.

Those of us who are looking to get fit and improve our well being flock to fitness books for instructions, guidelines, and expertise. However, it’s important to determine exactly which expert – and which book – is the best plan for our individual bodies, lifestyles, and goals. While they all vary, they can all be correct. As Lifehacker writes, these many experts do understand the rules and guidelines of nutritional information, and often are educated in their fields. So, although their information may contradict others’ writings on the very same subject, there’s no reason to doubt any of the many different fitness books – as long as their authors are the experts they claim to be, of course.

When attempting to choose a fitness plan and book, make sure the information is reasonable and healthy. Don’t adopt a plan that requires you to give up healthy eating habits, or to forsake regular activity in an effort to get fit. If you’re ever unsure, you can compare the book’s advice to the governmental guidelines for healthy lifestyles.